Last night, I got in touch with the guy whose always done our sign writing for us. In the past, he's done shop windows for us and once did Karens car. He really is very good and now, I want him to sign write my van for my future apple juice and cider business.

I would like you folks to look at my van as a blank page and help me to come up with some designs. Its been a while now since we've had anything sign written by him and he now has the ability to blow up photos and pictures and use them as part of the sign writing.

The Connect has a sliding door on one side, so both sides are not identical for sign writing purposes. The photograph thing has thrown me a little bit, because before this, I was thinking of something fairly simple and straight forward, if not boring.

My apple business is not really off the ground as yet but I thought that seeing my van might prompt local people to realise that I want their apples. Although I don't live in an apple growing area, there are heaps of them in peoples gardens that are quite often just left to rot and I could definately use them.

Top line Morfa Nefyn Orchard'. Second line ' Apple Juice and cider' Third line 'our phone number and eventually? Possibly a website address too.

Somewhere on the vans livery, i want to get across the idea that I want peoples apples.

These are about the full extent of my ideas. I haven't got a clue as to how the picture or pictures might look but I obviously want something thats quite clear, says alot about my business and doesn't just look like a colourful blur.

I need help on this one, so any arty doodles or advice would be very welcome indeed.

Last edited by Bodger on Thu Jun 09, 11 8:06 am; edited 1 time in total

No ideas on the design front I'm afraid - but just to say a decent signwriter will be able to take things like doors in his stride and leave it looking fairly seamless. My Transit has the same stuff on both sides and one side has the sliding door.

In my opinion - coming up with a good design is something you can either do or not do - some people just seem to have a flair for it!

Having said that, a mate of mine put me on to a designer locally when I was after stuff for the van. I had a logo picture that I just wanted the colours changing on, and some simple text to go with it. I also knew where I wanted them in relation to each other. Sent the pic and the words over to this guy and he got back to me and said that it shouldn't take much more than 30 minutes to convert to a format a signwriter would use - and as a special introductory rate he'd do it for 500 quid!! Yeah right!

In the end, a friend of my sister who enjoys mucking about with photoshop changed the colours of the pic for nothing, and a guy who I gave some chainsaw instruction to did all the conversion for free - which was a much better result!

May not be any help - but would the local paper be any help running it as a general interest story?

What do you think about this as a new livery for my van? This is what my sign writer came up with. I'm not happy with the font for the line that says ' happy to take your windfalls' so I'm going to get him to change it.

I've deliberately used the word 'take' because it didn't suggest that I'd actually be paying anything for the apples, so instead of me doing them a favour, they, the apple owners could end up doing me the favour.